Robert (Bob) L. McDonald, a native of Reno, Nevada, was born on South Virginia Street in 1920. His mother, Leola Lewis McDonald, and father, Joseph F. McDonald, Sr., were involved in the newspaper business. Leola McDonald wrote the society page,...

William Fisk Harrah was a native of California, born in 1911. He grew up and received his education in southern California, where his father was an attorney and politician. During his college years, William Harrah and his family encountered in...

Art Bernard was born in 1910 in Italy to American parents and first came to the United States at the age of five, in 1915. He lived with his mother and stepfather in Utah and learned a variety of languages early in his childhood. By the age of...

Lawrence W. Little was born in Colorado in 1900. He attended public schools and college in Colorado, and came to Nevada in 1924 to be a teacher at Carson High School. After several years as an instructor in mathematics and science, Mr. Little...

Arnold R. Trimmer, a native of California, spent nearly his entire life in Carson Valley. His parents moved from Diamond Valley, California, to the historic Frey ranch at the outskirts of Genoa in 1909, when he was a child of four. Mr. Trimmer...

Jean Ford was born in 1929 into an era of major transformations for women in the United States. During her lifetime doors were opening for a few bold and talented women whose actions changed the roles women would play in our country. Jean's life...

Born in 1887 at Glendale, Truckee Meadows, Silas Earl Ross was the son of a pioneer rancher and farmer. Following his public schooling at Glendale and Reno, Mr. Ross entered the University of Nevada, where he received his degree in mining...

Janet Carrica Inda was born in Fallon, Nevada, in January of 1945. The daughter of a Basque sheepherder, she spent her childhood years in the small towns of Nevada before settling in Reno. Proud of her Basque heritage (though her mother is...

In the year 1947 Reno's population was a mere 25,000, yet it boasted a total of 175 attorneys, many serving the wealthy eastern divorce trade. In this era of dude-ranch divorcees, only two other women besides Charlotte Hunter were practicing...

A 1995 project was a departure from the University of Nevada Oral History Program's customary concentration on the history of Nevada and the Great Basin: the program commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of Allied victory in World War II by...

In popular myth, anyone can make it to the top in America, no matter how humble his or her origins. That may be true, but few have faced greater challenges along the way than did Rollan Melton. Sonny, as he was called when he was young, was born...

Jim Hubbard was born in 1933 and began skiing as a teenager in Washington in the 1940s. He first skied the Eastern Sierra slopes above Reno in 1954, after being posted to Stead Air Force Base. Since the mid-1950s, skiing has become an important...

Erma O. Godbey was born in 1905 in Colorado, and she spent her early years in the Colorado mining camp of Silverton. After her marriage to Thomas Godbey, she lived in a number of other mining towns, arriving finally in Boulder City, Nevada. At that...

Meadows along the western edge of the Great Basin have been grazed by cattle ever since the first emigrant wagons pushed through in the 1840s. By 1850 permanent ranching operations existed, and today more than 80 percent of all agricultural land in...

Through the Glass Ceiling—A Life in Nevada Politics is the oral history of Sue Wagner, who served in the assembly in the 1970s, in the senate in the 1980s, and was elected lieutenant governor in 1991, serving one term. She became involved in...

John Francis Cahlan is a native of Nevada, born in Reno in 1902. He had a long career as a newspaperman and followed an avocation in politics, serving as a regent of the University of Nevada, a legislative lobbyist, and as an instigator of the...

As the twentieth century drew to a close, physical changes rendered the Truckee Meadows nearly unrecognizable to those who had helped build the community. Both Reno and Sparks had experienced major expansion since 1960, largely to accommodate a...

Glenn J. "Jake" Lawlor was for more than five decades one of the best-known sports figures in Nevada. A native of Iowa and at nineteen already an accomplished athlete, Lawlor arrived in Nevada in 1926 to attend the university at Reno. There, in...

Harry Hawkins was born in Alpine County, California, in 1881. His grandparents were among the earliest settlers in the area of Woodfords, on the property where Mr. Hawkins still resides. His home, which he calls "the castle of mystery," is a...